The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 40

There were two lines of approach, of which the first is indicated in a note under November 22nd, 1880:

'Lord Granville was engaged at this moment in trying, through Cardinal Newman, to induce the Pope to bully the Irish Bishops; but the Irish Bishops told the Pope, in reply to his remonstrances, that if he adopted a policy of compromise in Italy which was unpopular with the Church, he must leave them alone with Irish affairs.'

The "policy of compromise" was not likely to be adopted. Cardinal Manning, talking to Sir Charles on July 15th, 1880, on his return from Rome, expressed his belief that the Vatican was badly advised in its hostile att.i.tude towards the Italian Monarchy, which he personally would be prepared to support against the Revolutionary Party, since its fall would probably bring about an anti-clerical republic.

Far more continuous were the negotiations, with a view to influencing the Irish Church, carried on through Mr. George Errington, a gentleman of old Roman Catholic family, who had sat since 1874 as a moderate Home Rule member for County Longford. [Footnote: The historic difficulties in the way of an Emba.s.sy to the Vatican, fully given by Lord Fitzmaurice in the _Life of Lord Granville_, vol. ii., chap, viii., pp. 281-282, had been surmounted "by the practice of allowing a Secretary of Legation, nominally appointed to the Grand Ducal court of Tuscany, to reside at Rome, where he was regarded as _de facto_ Minister to the Vatican." Lord Derby had, however, withdrawn Mr. Jervoise, the last representative, and no other appointment had been made.]

The following notes show the points at which Sir Charles came into touch with the development of Mr. Errington's 'Mission' to the Vatican. On December 1st, 1880, Mr. Errington wrote--in pursuance of a conversation of the previous day--to solicit Sir Charles's offices with the French Government towards mitigating the severity with which expropriation of the unauthorized congregations might be carried out under M. Ferry's Article 7. The letter dealt also with the matter on which his 'Mission' was afterwards based:

"I am constantly receiving news from Ireland of the evil effects already produced by the temporary success at Rome of Archbishop Croke"--who represented advanced Nationalism--"and his party. This would have been quite impossible had any diplomatic relations existed.

Cardinal Jacobini will take care, I am sure, that such a thing does not occur again. Whether he can undo or counteract the mischief already done is, I am afraid, doubtful....

"I suppose it would be desirable in the interests of government and order in Ireland that the Vatican should do all in its power to keep the clergy from going with or countenancing the Land League."

On December 6th, 1880:

'Errington came to me in Paris, nominally on behalf of the Vatican, with a view of having negotiations entered upon, and I believe this was the time at which he obtained, at Lord Spencer's request, some sort of private commission from Lord Granville. The commission was afterwards made more definite.'

October 28th, 1881:

'I saw Errington, who was in Paris on his way to Rome with letters from Lord Granville, based on the request of Spencer and Forster that he, Errington, should represent the Irish Government at Rome during its great struggle with Parnell, matters in Ireland being too serious to make roundabout dealing through Lord Emly [Footnote: An Irish Roman Catholic M.P. who, after being Postmaster-general, was raised to the Peerage.] and Cardinal Howard safe; and Errington was to be tried from October until Easter....

'In the evening of November 10th, at dinner at the Harcourts', Mr.

Gladstone, taking me aside about Errington's mission, told me that he was bitterly opposed to the notion of reopening relations with the Papal Court; and there can be no doubt that he a.s.sented most unwillingly to the views of Spencer, Forster, and Harcourt in favour of the Errington "Mission." He deceived the House of Commons about it, because he always closed his own eyes to the facts. [Footnote: The line taken by the Government in the House of Commons was that Mr.

Errington had no formal appointment, and that his communications were not officially dealt with by the Foreign Office. These diplomatic explanations only increased the suspicion of the followers of Parnell and of the Ultra-Protestants led by Sir H. Drummond Wolff.]

'On December 24th, 1881, Lord O'Hagan pa.s.sed through Paris, despatched on a secret mission to Rome about Ireland by Forster, who was not satisfied with the results up to then of the Errington Mission.'

'On December 31st I received a letter from Forster, in which he said that Lord O'Hagan had returned, and that no notice had been taken by the papers of his visit to Rome, which was a good thing.'

To the principle of such intermediation Sir Charles had no objection. What he disliked was that the thing should be done and denied. He himself in the previous year had written by the Government's request to Cardinal Manning at Rome for a.s.surance that the future Bishop of a new See in Canada would be a British subject. Manning also had written to him concerning the establishment of a new See for Catholics of the Levant, with its seat in Cyprus, guaranteeing that "the influence of our Bishop and all about him would be ... strictly in support of the Government," and asking therefore that, "when the seat of Government for Cyprus had been fixed, Rome might be informed, as it would be desirable for the Bishop to be in the same place."

Manning was quite content with the influence that he could wield, and, as a letter from him in 1885 shows, was strongly against diplomatic relations between England and the Vatican. Sir Charles, however, did not take that view:

'Such perpetual applications have to be made to the Court of Rome, not only (as the public thinks) with regard to Irish affairs, but with regard to Roman Catholic interests in all parts of the world, that I have always been favourable to taking the public into our confidence in the matter and appointing a representative at the Court of Rome. At one time we used to carry on our affairs with the Papal Court through Cardinal Howard, an English Cardinal; but the Pope is so anxious to obtain official representation that he throws difficulties in the way of ecclesiastics acting as informal representatives. Then Lord O'Hagan used to go to Rome, at the expense of Irish Secret Service money, as a private traveller, and he used to carry on negotiations with the Vatican.'

Sir Charles resented 'the complications that are caused by our having to do that in fact which we refuse to do in form.' The Errington "Mission, which was no mission," was an instance.

Though the year drew to its close there was still no decision as to the means of dealing with obstruction. But approach was being made to a settled policy.

'On my return to London I found that a Cabinet had been called for Thursday, November 10th, to deal with the forms of the House, as the Speaker and Erskine May had been concocting a new code, which, I added, "is certain to be perfectly useless, as the Speaker is generally, and May invariably, wrong.... Direct closure is the only thing of any use. That would be one fight and no more; but the Speaker-May code would probably take a whole Session to get, and be useless when we have got it.'

'When Chamberlain came to dinner on November 11th, he left with me till the next day the "secret" paper printed for the Cabinet as to the forms of the House, which was written by May and annotated by the Speaker, and I was glad to find that it included closure.'

In a Parliamentary Session marked by so much that was inconclusive, Sir Charles had the satisfaction of recording in his diary one piece of progressive legislation which was his own. By April, 1881, he had got ready his Bill for putting an end to the Unreformed Munic.i.p.al Corporations, and so carrying out the policy which he had recommended while in Opposition, and it became law.

CHAPTER XXIV

EUROPEAN POLITICS

In 1881 the general European situation was still critical. The Greeks had seen Montenegro's claim made good while their own pretensions remained unsatisfied, and at the beginning of the year war between Greece and Turkey seemed so probable that Lord Houghton was writing anxiously to ask Sir Charles by what means the antiquities of Athens could be guaranteed against bombardment.

Sir Charles notes, on January 18th and 21st, conversations between himself and Mr. Goschen, who had temporarily returned from his mission at Constantinople, 'as to helping Greece by a naval force, which he and I both desired.' But Mr. Gladstone refused his sanction to this project, and Sir Charles for the moment took a very grave view, noting in his diary on February 1st:

"Lord Granville has now to decide (in two days), before Goschen starts for Constantinople via Berlin, whether he will disgracefully abandon Greece or break up the Concert of Europe."

The Concert was kept together, but only upon condition of limiting Greece to a frontier with which Sir Charles was extremely discontented.

'On March 27th I was in a resigning humour about Greece, but could not get anybody to agree with me, and Chamberlain said that not even Liberal public opinion in England would now support isolated action or Anglo-Italian intervention. Chamberlain thought that in the interest of Greece herself it was desirable that she should be made to take the last Turkish offer, which gave her all the revenue-producing country, and kept from her the costly and the dangerous country.'

A week later he wrote a minute for Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone, proposing that autonomy should be given to those portions of Epirote territory which were being withheld from Greece; but this plan was negatived, and a final settlement was reached on May 17th.

The settlement of 1881 was not a settlement which contented Greece and the friends of Greece; and it was only a provisional settlement.

But new complications were developing elsewhere.

'On February 1st I wrote to Gambetta by our "bag" to tell him that Sheffield' (Lord Lyons's secretary) 'would call on him from me to tell him a secret. This secret was that the Three Emperors' League was again revived and France once more isolated. But this was such a dead secret that even our Cabinet were not to know for fear some of them might talk.' [Footnote: The murder of the Emperor Alexander II. on March 13th terminated these plans for the time. But out of them subsequently grew the meeting of the three Emperors at Skierniewice on September 15th and 16th, 1884; and indirectly Prince Bismarck's "reinsurance" treaty with Russia, which his successor, Caprivi, refused to renew in 1890.]

France, though 'isolated,' was beginning to take action which threatened far-spreading trouble. Mention has been made of her pretension to Tunis, and of the support to that pretension afforded by a hint of Lord Salisbury's in 1878. In the early spring of 1881 the first serious step was taken to threaten the independence or quasi-independence of Tunis.

This development was the more serious because an important dispute was in progress concerning a Tunisian estate called the Enfida, to which rival claims were put forward by M. Levy, a British subject, and by a French company, the Societe Ma.r.s.eillaise. On January 12th M. Levy's representative, himself also a British subject, was expelled from the property by agents of the French Consulate.

'On February 3rd there came to me at ten o'clock in my Foreign Office boxes a telegram from Lord Lyons, which told us that the French had sent the _Friedland_ from Toulon to Tunis to bully the Bey. I wrote off by special messenger to Lord Granville that we ought at once to send the fleet to Tunis unless the _Friedland_ were withdrawn, and Lord Granville accepted this view, and telegraphed to Lord Lyons to that effect at noon. [Footnote: 'On February 5th, the Cabinet having approved our suggestion, we telegraphed for the _Thunderer_ and a despatch-boat to sail at once for Tunis.']

'Our difficulty was in this matter to avoid acting with Italy. We did not want to keep the French out of Tunis, but we could not have ironclads used to force Tunisian law courts into giving decisions hostile to British subjects. Barrere wrote to me from Paris at Gambetta's wish saying that I was labouring under a grievous mistake in thinking that the _Friedland_ was sent to settle the Enfida case against the English. The s.h.i.+p was sent because the Bey "declines to sign a treaty of alliance with us." At the same time he went on to say that the present policy of France would not last longer than six months, which meant, of course, that Gambetta intended to form a Government at that time (which as a fact he did), and that "our friend deplores the present policy of the Government and declines all responsibility."'

On August 25th Gambetta expressed to Dilke "profound disapprobation of all that has been done in Tunis," on which is noted: 'Possibly he would have done the same, but he is very wise after the event.'

'On May 6th Lord Granville, against Tenterden's opinion and my own, sketched drafts to Germany and Austria as to the position of the French in Tunis, with a view to raise the Concert of Europe in their path. We pointed out to him that Germany and Austria would snub us, and succeeded at last in stopping this precious scheme. The wily Russian got up the trouble by hinting verbally to Lord Granville that Russia would act with England and Italy in this matter. A curious league: England, Russia, and Italy against France; and a queer Concert. The proposal led to trouble three days later, for, of course, the Russians told the French in such a way as to make them believe that the idea was ours.'

On the evening of May eth Sir Charles met Laffitte, "the Comtist Pope," at the Political Economy Club.

'Frederic Harrison treated him as an old lady of the Faubourg would treat the Pope or the Comte de Chambord, or both rolled into one. But Laffitte happening to say that he approved of the French expedition to Tunis, Harrison's feelings became too much even for his reverence and his religion. Laffitte's remark, from Laffitte, showed, however, how unanimous was the French feeling....

'On the 9th the trouble which I had expected broke out. The French Amba.s.sador (Challemel-Lacour) came to see me in a great rage, and told me that his Government had heard that we had tried to raise Germany against France on the Tunis question by an alliance offered at Berlin, though not through our Amba.s.sador. This particular story was untrue. I denied it, and I then went to Lord Granville, who denied it.... I then wrote to Challemel to ask him to give up names; but he declined.'

France was in conflict with the Kroumirs on her Algerian frontier, the expeditionary force penetrated the interior, and by the middle of June the Bey had appointed M. Roustan, the French Consul, to represent him in all matters.

Justifications were put forward, and there was much discussion as to what Lord Salisbury had said or not said at Berlin in 1878.

'Lord Salisbury had made Wolff withdraw the question, of which (foolishly from the Conservative point of view) he had given notice, but the matter having been raised, the Cabinet, on Friday, 13th, decided to publish a portion of Lord Salisbury's despatches, though not the worst.... [Footnote: A letter from Lord Granville to Sir Charles, of May 15th, 1881, shows the difficulty. "I sent, according to custom, the Salisbury Tunis papers to the Marquis. You will be surprised to hear that he does not like them. He objects to all, but princ.i.p.ally to the extracts from Lord Lyons' despatch." Lord Granville goes on to suggest alternative courses, the first being "to consent at his request to leave out the extracts, with a warning that it is not likely it will be possible to refuse them later."]

'I wrote to Lord Granville to say that I was sorry there had not been included in the papers a despatch of July 16th, 1878, giving the conversation between Lord Lyons and Waddington on Waddington's return to Paris' (from the Congress of Berlin). 'On the 9th, on the 11th, and on the 13th July, 1878, Lord Lyons had reported the irritation in France at the Cyprus Convention. On July 16th Waddington returned to Paris, and the row in the French Press suddenly ceased. In his despatch Lord Lyons says that Waddington told him that Lord Salisbury "had a.s.sured him" that "H. M. G. would make no objection if it suited France to take possession of Tunis." [Footnote: The Life of Lord Lyons, by Lord Newton, gives, on July 20th, 1878, a letter from Lord Salisbury which evidently refers to the despatch. In this letter Lord Salisbury says: "What M. Waddington said to you is very much what he said to me at Berlin...." A further pa.s.sage in the letter is: "If France occupied Tunis tomorrow, we should not remonstrate." See _Life of Lord Lyons_, vol. ii., p. 152.] Waddington said that he-- Waddington--had pointed out to Lord Salisbury that Italy would object, and that Lord Salisbury had replied that she must "seek compensation in Tripoli." Corti had also a.s.sured me that Lord Salisbury had said this to him at the time. I strongly urged the publication of Lord Lyons' despatch in justice to ourselves, if anything was to be published. Lord Salisbury undoubtedly, and even by his own admission, had used most impolitic language, giving up that which was contrary to British interests to give up and which was not ours to give. (He was fated to do the same thing in the case of Madagascar.) He had afterwards denied that he had done anything of the kind. He also had denied that France had minded our occupation of Cyprus, and doubly concealed the fact that after making the foolish mistake of taking Cyprus, he had got out of the difficulty in a still more foolish fas.h.i.+on.'

This led to correspondence between Count Corti, then Italian Amba.s.sador at Constantinople, and Sir Charles--a discussion which was renewed later in conversation: